Vicki Swales, Head of Land Use Policy, on High Nature Value farming and the wildlife that depends on it.
Let's support farmers who do more for nature
Machair by Chris Gomersall (rspb-images.com).
You’re walking in the countryside, across farmland. Your senses are under attack. Under your feet a thick carpet of grasses and flowers, the perfume of which fills your nostrils with the smell of summer. Your eyes are dazzled by the brilliant colours – pinks, yellow, orange – and around you a cacophony of sound as insects buzz and lapwings call the alarm at your approach. You must be dreaming, right? Or you’ve entered a time-warp and returned to the 1950s? Neither. You’re in 2013 and walking across the machair land of the Outer Hebrides.
In places like this, traditional farming and crofting create a landscape of stunning natural diversity. It’s a way of life – and a way to make a livelihood - for many people across the Highlands and Islands of Scotland. It’s High Nature Value (HNV) farming.
Building arable stacks on Outer Hebrides to benefit species like corn bunting by Jamie Boyle (rspb-images.com).
But it’s a way of life under threat and many people, and the wildlife that depends on them, are living on the edge. Farming in these places is tough. Harsh weather, poor soils, distance from markets and low prices for the food produced conspire to make this a hard way to earn a living. And whilst farmers and crofters can at least sell the cattle and sheep they produce, there is no way to earn a reward from the wildlife and other environmental benefits produced as a result. The odds are stacked up against HNV farming.
We could, of course, consign this way of life, and the benefits it brings, to the dustbin. View it as antiquated and out-of-step in a world of technology and progress and pursue ‘bigger, better, best’.
Or we could view it through a different lens; a very modern example of how to manage our limited land and natural resources sustainably, producing food, livelihoods and a range of benefits for nature.
In a world of different economics, HNV farmers and crofters would earn the true value of all that they produce whilst environmentally damaging farming systems would pay the true cost. But we haven’t made that paradigm shift yet and so HNV farming and crofting needs our help if we believe it ought to survive.
Great-yellow bumble bee by Mike Edwards (rspb-images.com).
That’s why RSPB Scotland, along with other organisations including the Scottish Crofting Federation, is calling on Government to take steps to support HNV farming. The tools to do this lie within the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), a reform of which is currently being negotiated. Reform can’t come a moment too soon to a policy which hands out the greatest levels of taxpayer money to farming in the most productive and least disadvantaged parts of Scotland. Meanwhile, the farmers and crofters who depend on public support the most, receive the least.
Corn bunting by Andy Hay (rspb-images.com).
Over the coming months, the Scottish Government will be taking some important decisions about how to spend an annual farming budget of in the region of £650 million. That’s around £129 each year for every Scottish citizen. A lot of money that, spent wisely, can ensure a better future for all of Scotland’s HNV farmers and crofters and can encourage a greener approach to farming more widely.
If you think these decisions matter, please respond to the consultation. Details are available here: http://www.rspb.org.uk/community/getinvolved/naturesheroes/b/weblog/archive/2013/05/29/help-ensure-that-wildlife-friendly-farming-in-scotland-secures-the-maximum-funding-possible.aspx
Let’s give HNV farmers the support they deserve.